They are providing army camps to make photovoltaic parks

The inactive army camps, which the government has long intended to utilise in several ways, are likely to provide solutions to the grand attempt to extract electricity from solar energy and export it from our country to Europe.

As protothema.gr is informed, this is one of the facets of project "Helios", whose general parameters were presented by environment minister George Papaconstantinou yesterday, Monday, at a conference in Hamburg.

The plan provides for the granting of a total area of about 200 square kilometers to German and other corporations in order for them to build solar power plants, which will aid the aim of our country to multiply by 10 the installed capacity (2200 MW in 2020), and channel solar energy to Germany and other European countries.

Germany is the leader in the field of photovoltaics across Europe but has opted for even bigger growth in the sector, as it gradually seems to become disengaged from the use of nuclear energy due to the great reactions of its people. Our country, with 300 days of sunshine per year, is estimated to have 50% more sunlight than the German territory.

The program aims to exploit 3 to 10 GW of solar energy which, with an average investment cost of about 2 million/MW, relates to a total investment of up to 20 billion euros, excluding the strengthening of network infrastructure. Moreover, the recipient countries could cover the cost of the latter in return for the power generated from Greece.

Athens estimates that about 30% of the energy produced will be available in Greece and the rest will be exported. It is also estimated that it could be possible to involve the five domestic solar panel manufacture plants in the entire project and create a total of 60.000 jobs.

The inactive army camps in Northern Greece seem ideal for the photovoltaic parks, while other areas are being sought in cooperation with both the agriculture ministry and the PPC, which could contribute its inactive mines.

Certainly, a large part of electricity could come from the islands and then Peloponnese and then …ascend to Europe either via the submarine cable that connects us to Italy or through the northern electrical interconnections of the country.